THE FREE LANCE-STAR

There's nothing pretentious about the Pirate's Den, the new indoor-outdoor waterfront restaurant in Fairview Beach.

You can show up windblown from the boat and smelling of sunscreen, order a plastic cup of wine or beer, and settle in for a relaxed summer evening.

The servers are laid-back but polite, and the speaker music tends toward '60s and '70s hits.

If you sit outside, you can watch a nesting osprey feed its young, and if you're inside you can look at nautical dècor featuring a giant stuffed squid.

It's pirate casual, but the menu yields hidden treas-ures from appetizers through dessert.

An appetizer special of crab-stuffed mushrooms ($7) sounded like typical waterfront fare, the kind you've had so often you could sleep through it. But these didn't come out of some box in the freezer, nor was the crabmeat stretched with breadcrumbs.

Portions of fresh blue-crab meat were simply seasoned with Worcestershire and paprika, spooned into good-sized mushroom caps and topped with mozzarella. The filled caps were broiled until the cheese bubbled, the mushrooms released their liquid, and the flavors mingled.

Crab-lovers can also dig into appetizers of crab balls or crab tortillas ($7 each).

Continuing the theme, the sandwich menu offers a crab cake on a bun with lettuce, tomato and mayo ($8), and the entree list includes two crab cakes with sides and a roll ($16).

A friend wanted only one crab cake and so ordered the sandwich minus the bun. Instead, she was allowed to substitute a side order of perfectly cooked, bacon-seasoned green beans.

The crab cake looked to be at least 6 ounces, with only a light breading outside. It was mildly seasoned and fried to a gentle crunch.

A rib-eye steak ($16) arrived straight from the charcoal grill, seared outside, rosy pink inside and hot throughout--the definition of medium, as ordered.

The Jack Sprats of the world would tell you to avoid such a well-marbled steak. But at least from a taste standpoint, a little internal fat is not a bad thing. This was a juicy, tender and flavorful plateful.